Events Calendar

Harris Engineering Center, Room 101
November 19, 2009
01:30 PM - 02:30 PM

The U.S. Department of Energy's goal is affordable zero energy homes by 2025. The General Electric Corporation announced they think affordability will be achieved by 2015. Three sets of new near zero-energy homes have been designed, built, and monitored in the Knoxville area. These houses range from $100K Habitat for Humanity, to $250 K builder spec, to $500K high end builder spec. Energy costs have ranged from $0.50 to $1.50/day. Promising avenues for bringing the first cost down are pre-manufactured panels for both the exterior envelope and the interior utility walls. Expected increases in costs for coal-generated electric power, cap and trade, carbon tax, mandated renewable energy portfolios, plug in hybrid vehicles, smart grid and market adaption of building performance labels will all help the pursuit of affordable zero energy homes, but innovation is needed at both the systems level, i.e. small integrated geothermal heat pumps and in home waste heat recovery and utilization, and at the whole building system level, i.e. aggregating homes to reduce peak electric utility summer and winter systems loads.